Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are trying to turn America's super-rich into a
generation of 'great givers'. Tom Leonard reports.

As one would expect of an endeavour involving America's super, super-rich, it all started with a dinner – a secret one envisaged by Warren Buffett, organised by Bill and Melinda Gates, and hosted by David Rockefeller, patriarch of the famous dynasty, at the elegant and discreet President's House at Rockefeller University in New York on May 5 last year.

This week, the impressive fruits of that dinner were unveiled, as 40 billionaires – worth a combined $230 billion (£145 billion) – signed a "giving pledge" to donate at least 50 per cent of their wealth to good causes. It is a remarkable act of noblesse oblige, even in a country whose tradition of philanthropy is the strongest in the industrialised world.

Mr Buffett is an extremely successful investor and one of the world's richest men, as well as one of its biggest givers to charity. Having pledged to give away 99 per cent of his estimated $47 billion fortune, much of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the so-called Sage of Omaha had wanted to get together a small group of like-minded billionaires to encourage their peers to join the ranks of what he dubbed the "Great Givers". Mr Gates, who has taken on an almost messianic role in advancing philanthropy since relinquishing the reins of Microsoft, needed no persuading to get involved.

The dozen or so dinner guests included Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor; three Wall Street financiers, including George Soros; and the Duty Free Shoppers owner Charles Feeney. Flying in from out of town were Oprah Winfrey, the CNN founder Ted Turner, the Los Angeles philanthropic couple Eli and Edythe Broad, and John and Tashia Morgridge, the former boss of the technology giant Cisco Systems and his wife. Providing an insight into the workings of such projects, both the Broads and the Morgridges had balked at the long flight from California but had been won over by the imposing names at the bottom of the invitation.

As they sat around a large conference table, everyone was asked to talk in turn about what philanthropy meant to them. Most said they enjoyed giving money away more than actually making it. Later, conversation turned to how to lighten the wallets of their peers. The consensus, said David Rockefeller Jnr, was that they would have their work cut out – "delicate, and probably prolonged, one-on-one work", as he put it.

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Over the next year, the plotters fleshed out their plans over two more dinners, one at the New York Public Library, another at a hotel near San Francisco. At the Manhattan dinner, Mr Buffett praised a Wall Street investment banker's wife for coming up with the best idea he had heard – sit down, work out how much one's children needed and decide what to do with the rest. Keen to see if their hopes might be realised beyond the US, the Gateses hosted a dinner in London, while Mr Gates alone held others in India and China. By the beginning of this year, they had formulated the idea – floated at the dinners – of trying to tie people down to some sort of public pledge.

In June, Mr Buffett and the Gateses officially unveiled their campaign. America's billionaires were invited to take a "giving pledge" by writing a public letter – available on the campaign's website – promising to give away at least a half of their wealth. The obligation will be a moral rather than legal one, but they will have each other to buck up their resolve and make sure they do not slip into selfish ways. They will also be able to cheer each other on – and perhaps bask once more in the shared limelight – at what are expected to be annual Great Givers summits.

Four other billionaires took the pledge initially and have now been joined by such varied names as George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, the Texas oil man T Boone Pickens, the broadcasting mogul Barry Diller and his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, the hotel heir Barron Hilton and the investor Ronald Perelman. Larry Ellison, co-founder of the technology company Oracle and estimated to be America's third-richest man after Buffett and Gates, pledged to give away 95 per cent of his fortune. He told Mr Buffett he had always intended to do so but previously regarded it as a private matter, to which Mr Buffett riposted that it was crucial to inspire others by public example.

Interestingly, despite being at that first dinner and reportedly speaking enthusiastically, Oprah Winfrey and George Soros have yet to sign up. Perhaps they want to be private about their generosity, too, but along with members of the Walton family, which owns the WalMart empire, and the founders of Google, billionaires Sergei Brin and Larry Page, they are likely to experience the flip side of the peer pressure factor in this campaign. This is that the names of those who don't sign up are glaringly obvious from the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, and they can expect to be dogged by embarrassing media questions until they do.

Perhaps that extra jog will do the trick, as Mr Buffett insisted he did not put pressure on anyone to sign up when he contacted 70 of America's 80 richest individuals. "It was a very soft sell," he said on Wednesday. Two people had changed their wills as a result of his phone calls but he had also received some "Noes", he added. He is confident pledgers will stick to their promises and he hopes the press will stay on their case.

Fortune magazine estimates that if the people on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans all made the pledge, an additional $600 billion could flow to non-profit groups – twice the amount Americans gave last year. Mr Gates believes that only 15 per cent of wealthy Americans currently give away large amounts of money.

"We're hoping that America, which is the most generous society on Earth, becomes even more generous over time," said Mr Buffett. "We hope that not only will that norm move toward even greater philanthropic contributions, but toward smarter ones."

Some sceptics would agree with that sentiment. They note that exactly when the money will be given, and how, and – most importantly – to whom, remain up to the donor. Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute in Washington, has long argued that too little US philanthropy goes to the most needy. The very wealthy tend to give most of their money to universities, hospitals, and arts and cultural organisations, he says. He also notes that while Mr Buffett has made clear he wants his money to be given away quickly, many US philanthropists sink theirs into charitable foundations that only trickle a little of it out each year.

The financial crisis and recession have dented the generosity of rich Americans, even if those with links to Wall Street will be glad of any chance to buff up their public image. The example of Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller, turn-of-the-century industrialists and image buffers, encouraged rich Americans to be philanthropic. Encouragement is the key again now, says Sean Stannard-Stockton, who runs a company that advises would-be philanthropists.

He says the giving pledge is "a really big deal and potentially signifies a shift in cultural norms". Its value, he believes, lies less in how much the billionaires themselves give than the example they set to others in a country in which the wealthy are often revered.

For the past century, America has devoted about two per cent of its GDP to philanthropy, with charitable giving strong at all levels of society. "There is a potential with this pledge to create a change of behaviour that could drive that percentage up to three or four," Stannard-Stockton says. "That would be a far, far bigger achievement than anything these billionaires can raise.

"If every billionaire commits to giving away 50 per cent of their wealth, we'd see billions of dollars going to philanthropy. But if just 20 per cent of millionaires, committed to giving away 50 per cent of their wealth we'd see trillions of dollars."